The Son of the Rings

Once it was finished in 1955, J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings became well-beloved by people who liked fantasy fiction. Tolkien's literary mindset and deep appreciation for language helped elevate the tone of his tale of the heroism of Frodo Baggins and the defeat of the evil Sauron, and his academic credentials helped as well. But in spite of them, LOTR was thought of as a particularly elegant example of genre fiction and little more.

Yet over time opinions began to shift as appreciation for the literary merit of popular novels and genre fiction took hold. Novels did not have to be dreary or impenetrable in order to Say Something, and more and more readers began to do more than just read The Lord of the Rings. They began to think about it. So as Tolkien himself continued to work on his mythology of the world of Middle-Earth, which was to be called The Silmarillion, he developed it with at least part of an ear to the discussions and reflections on the earlier work.

But this much more complex work -- which would have a significantly steeper entrance curve than did The Hobbit or LOTR -- was not finished by the time Tolkien died in 1973. It was left to his son Christopher, whom the elder Tolkien had named the literary executor of his estate, to compile what had been finished, to polish what hadn't, and now and again to weave the sections together with threads of his own. The completed Silmarillion was published in 1977, but the new interest in exploring the texts Tolkien actually published as well as their development would soon prompt a new project, the History of Middle-Earth. The title is almost a pun, as it refers not just to the historic tales of the world Tolkien created but also to how they came to be.

Christopher Tolkien published the 12 volumes of this series from 1983 to 2002, and added six more versions of stories his father had begun and abandoned or simply never published. Four of them connected to Middle-Earth and two of them were more directly related to Tolkien's "day job" as a lecturer and researcher of English literature at Oxford.

Christopher Tolkien died Wednesday at the age of 95. He had been, like his father, an instructor at Oxford, but published very little of his own creation outside of professional work. Without him, J.R.R. Tolkien might have been remembered as the creator of one of the 20th century's most elegant and cerebral fantasy stories, and The Lord of the Rings itself thought of as a very good piece of work, although the modern take would sniff it was a bit behind the times and distinctly sanitized of the blood, guts and mud that was a part of the real worlds of knights and kings. But with Christopher, LOTR can be explored as commentary on the human condition, the relationship of humanity to the creation around it, the place of humanity in the cosmos, and much more. And J.R.R. Tolkien himself can be seen for what he was -- a serious writer and thinker who thought as he wrote, thought about what he wrote, and thought about those who would read it later. Namárië indeed.